Costa Coffee in the UK is likely to cause confusion after launching its new “Spanish Latte”, a long coffee drink that includes sweetened condensed milk.
Available in hot or iced versions, the Spanish latte is described as “subtly sweet” and “velvety”, but most Canarian residents will recognise it as a longer variation of the local café leche y leche.
“Latte” is, of course, the Italian word for milk, and the word is hardly ever used when ordering coffee in Spain. If you want the closest thing to a caffe latte, a cafe au lait or just a coffee with steamed milk, you order a café con leche.
This will normally arrive in a cup and saucer and is one of the larger coffee drinks that can be ordered, although it never reaches the size of the bucketfuls of frothy coffee served in American-style coffee stores. Most Spanish coffee shops will also understand capuchino and sprinkle cocoa powder on the foamed milk.
Smaller drinks include the café cortado, which may be served in a smaller cup or a glass and is a shot of coffee mixed with a small amount of steamed milk. This is roughly the equivalent of an Italian macchiatto, while a café solo is the same measure as a straight espresso.
The Canarian sweet tooth is catered to by two popular local drinks: first, there’s the leche y leche (milk and milk), a coffee that combines heated milk with sweetened condensed milk. Finally, there’s the Canarian barraquito – a spectacular drink of five layers – condensed milk, liquor (usually Licor 43), espresso coffee, milky coffee and foamed milk.
In Spain, milky coffee drinks are popular in the morning but can be ordered anytime – there’s none of that Italian idea that they shouldn’t be served in the afternoon, and it’s perfectly normal to round off a long lunch with a coffee.